


Closure

by krazieLeylines



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gamzee misses his moirail, Multi, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Sadstuck, along with a lot of other characters, also Karkat is dead, it takes place at Karkat's funeral, lots of flash backs to when people weren't yet dead, the humans live on Alternia, the oc's are Karkat and Jade's children, tw: talk of suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krazieLeylines/pseuds/krazieLeylines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Tonight, we gather to celebrate the life of Karkat Vantas.”</p><p>This isn’t Gamzee’s first time at one of these shin-digs. He’s been to a total of three before, though none of them had hurt quite like Tavros’s. That had been five sweeps ago, the exact date and time branded to his think pan like a tattoo that never stops bleeding.</p><p>When Gamzee had to say goodbye to his matesprit, his heart had been lost.</p><p>And yet here he remained, still intact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closure

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [drifbilim](http://drifbilim.tumblr.com/) on tumblr who wanted some gamkar/gamrezi to inspire her.

“Tonight, we gather to celebrate the life of Karkat Vantas.”

This isn’t Gamzee’s first time at one of these shin-digs. He’s been to a total of three before, though none of them had hurt quite like Tavros’s. That had been five sweeps ago, the exact date and time branded to his think pan like a tattoo that never stops bleeding.

When Gamzee had to say goodbye to his matesprit, his heart had been lost.

And yet here he remained, still intact.

Because life on Alternia had been forever reformed since their victory in the game, the juggalo taking care of the ceremony was very much sympathetic, or at least good at playing so, and it wasn’t just because Gamzee was the head of their church. Funerals in their old Alternia had never been grand affairs, usually taking place in the graveyard and consisting of the grieving quadrantmates protecting the fresh corpse from the savage undead for the first couple of days.

If he had wanted to, Gamzee could have arranged a funeral that would have required every local land-dweller to pay tribute. As it was, Karkat would have loathed the idea of a lavish ceremony with a bunch of strangers coming to stare at his dead body.

“Gamzee?”

The highblood snaps to attention, pushing a rebellious curl out of his face that he had been unable to pull back into his braid with all the others. “Yeah?”

The other juggalo gives him an empathetic smile. “As Karkat’s moirail, you get to choose whether you would like to speak first, or last,” she explains slow and gentle, obviously used to dealing with trolls in mourning.

Gamzee glances down at his lap, where his speech is crumbled into a tight ball. He’s rewritten the damn thing at least a dozen times in the past few days, but no matter how proud he is of it once it’s done, he always looks at it and realizes that it’s shit, and that he has to start over to avoid embarrassing Karkat in the afterlife, too.

(If there is an afterlife.)

“I’ll go last,” Gamzee decides, face heating underneath his paint when he realizes that everyone’s eyes are on him, waiting for his answer. There’s no way he’s going up there without anything to say. Karkat deserves better than that. He’ll just have to write his final draft during a break. Surely they’ll have a break between speeches? He thinks that’s how it went with the other funerals.

“Alright. It’s settled. Karkat’s ashenmates will be the first to speak.” The juggalo turns to the crowd, searching the faces as if she knows who she’s referring to. There is only hushed judgment awaiting her, so the troll opens her book for reference and winces. “It appears that only one of his ashenmates is still with us. Would Karkat’s auspistice please step forward?” This time, she doesn’t wait to look at her notes and adds, “Kanaya Maryam.”

Said troll stands up slowly, as if she had been waiting for her name to summon her. The sweeps have been good to her, and even the single gray strand in her hair appears to be intentional, part of the unique look that had Kanaya the icon of the now existent troll fashion world.

“Thank you,” Kanaya says, though her voice says the exact opposite. Gamzee hasn’t forgotten her rather vocal opinion of clowns and the dark carnival.

She stands at the podium when the other troll moves aside, squaring her shoulders and taking up the space as though she owns it. “Ahem,” she starts, clearing her throat softly, but somehow commanding attention instantaneously, “I would like to start by telling everyone a story. This is a hero’s story. This is Karkat’s story.

“When we all went through sgrub, commonly referred to as the “Trials” nowadays, Karkat was our leader. It happened quite by accident, as I recall. There were originally two teams, chosen to be led by Terezi on one side, and Vriska and Aradia on the other. After some cajoling, Karkat was able to convince Terezi to step aside, and he took her spot. And when it became clear that there was always meant to be one team, brought into the game by two separate chains, well, Karkat again declared himself everyone’s superior. That was back when we were six, and our dear late friend has changed a lot since then, but he never stopped being a leader. And more importantly, a hero.

“Marked for death since the day he hatched, having to live each night with the paralyzing fear of what would happen if he so much as scuffed his knee during outside play, our friend never had it easy. Not that anyone would have known from first meeting him. Karkat gave the impression that he was superior to everyone, superior even to the Heiress herself. He was so believable in this act that I’m very convinced he believed it himself at times. 

“Karkat has never been the type of hero that we would read of in stories in our modern times. Ornery. Foul-mouthed. Perpetually angry. Hostile. Brash. None of the typical traits of Prince Charming. But it was clear from day one that there was one thing that has been, and will always be: beloved. In our adolescence, Karkat was the center of our social circle. In the game, he was the center of our strength. He led us into each and every battle, and when the battles were won, he tended to our wounds, both physical and emotional. Karkat knew what it was like to be ground down so low in the dirt and the mud that you thought you’d never seen the natural pallor of your own flesh again. And he knew when to be sympathetic, and when to give you a slap across the face and force you to stand on your own two feet.  
“We thought we had won the game. We thought we would rule as Gods. No one was more excited to do so than Karkat. Instead we were cast out to the far reaches of space, on a lonely little meteor, in a lonely little galaxy. Our only entertainment being each other, and messing with the lives of the mortals we were supposed to be ruling over. In the end, though, most of them ended up getting the upper hand in our cross-species conversations, to Karkat’s never ending frustration.”

There is some half-hearted laughter trilling around the block, and Gamzee feels the corner of his lips curl up for a moment.

“Life up to his sixth wriggling day had taught Karkat to be strong,” Kanaya continues, the smile on her own face fading, “but the grueling trials of the meteor, the horrors he had to witness and face as his closest and most trusted of allies – his most treasured of friends – turned upon one another… some in vengeance, some in delusion, some in mere boredom… these things taught Karkat to be weak. These things taught Karkat how to be humble. And his humility came to be his biggest strength as a hero…”

\-----

_Focusing on one thing wasn’t exactly the easiest of tasks, back when Gamzee was on sopor. But no matter the murky haze drifting through Gamzee’s mind, one troll always stood as a beacon of distraction. With Karkat’s loud theatrics and eternally endearing nature, Gamzee always shifted his wavering attention back to his pal like a moth to a flame._

_That was why, instead of retreating back to his mind as Karkat gave his speech, Gamzee kept his gaze centered on his best friend, chin resting on the back of his chair, a sloppy grin plastered to his face._

_“Alright, listen up, you shitfaced maggots! I’m only going to say this once, so stuff whatever idiotic verbal spittle you have planned to say back down your protein chutes where they belong, never to see the light of day. We have been tested, proven our worth, and vomited upon by the universe that stole from us our well-deserved trophy. But we have a chance – a chance for vengeance!”_

_Gamzee’s smile twisted up at the corners. He didn’t know much about romance, admittedly, didn’t have anything but vague definitions for moirallegiance and diamonds and soulmates locked away in his think pan, but if there was one thing Gamzee knew, it was that he belonged to Karkat, belonged with Karkat. It was simply the way the universe worked, and Gamzee didn’t question it._

_“It has come to my attention that these aliens – these humans – are somehow responsible for our fall from godhood. First I suspected malevolence, but now I’ve come to the conclusion that their mistake had come to fruition through pure, wholehearted dumbassery. These psychotic nutjobs are about as clever as week-old turd. And they have made a mistake – the biggest mistake of their insect lifespans. They are to us mere flies, and we are their gods. Let’s show them a god’s mighty wrath.”_

_He sure was getting riled up, that spitfire little troll. Gamzee bit back a chuckle, not wanting to interrupt Karkat’s speech. Karkat’s rage always provoked the funniest little feeling in Gamzee’s body; it started with a tingle in his fingers, as if they were seeking an itch to scratch, and moved to his face, his expression softening, his smile straightening from its twisted curl, and ended with the slightest pressure in his throat, air that wanted to escape through his lips, maybe make a sound as it left, maybe a “shh” or a “ooh”. Gamzee pursed his lips, mouthed the word, but didn’t set it free._

_“As your leader, I am commanding us to work as a team – of which I am the leader of, so don’t go getting any fucking coup d'état ideas – to sabotage these pansy-ass losers into cyberspace. They’ll learn who their true deities are, and know their prayers for mercy will forever go unanswered, for—”_

_Gamzee sort of stopped paying attention to the words around that point. It was so much nicer to drift on the harsh rise and fall of Karkat’s tone of voice. There were creases making a home between Karkat’s eyes, and the clown wondered at what would happen if he tried to smooth them out with a thumb. Probably more screaming and profanity. Maybe Gamzee would catch a hint of his secretive bro’s mystery color blush. After a few moments of silent debate, Gamzee discarded the notion. Any color would be just as miraculous, he knew, if that color belonged to Karkat, pumping through his blood system and keeping him alive._

_The speech went on for quite a while. Gamzee caught a few others drifting off and gave their shoulders a helpful shake. This earned him piercing glares, but Gamzee didn’t notice, his gaze returned to his white beacon._

_\---_

_“Nice speech, brother,” Gamzee congratulated him afterwards, “You got a way with those mirthful vocab words, twisting them to your liking and all that shit. Nice to listen to.”_

_Karkat heaved a rather exasperated sigh. “Let me guess: you didn’t listen to a single fucking word.”_

_That wasn’t entirely true, so the clown tossed some words through his memory to impress Karkat with. “Nah, bro, I caught most of the motherfuckin’ beginning. Some stuff about gods and holy wrath. I really dug that part. And, uh, lots of colorful profanity. You’re just a cussing masterful motherfucker, ain’t you?”_

_“Oh my god. Did you at least manage to puzzle out what the point was?”_

_“Uhhh, might have missed that bit.”_

_Another large sigh. Karkat sure seemed to be under a lot of stress, Gamzee noticed, and pondered the idea of inviting the other into his pile again. Before he could consider it seriously, Karkat spoke._

_“Let me put it into words someone even with your mental capacity can understand. I am ordering you to get on your husktop, message one of the human kids, and mess with their heads. Pretend that you’re one of those scary-ass monster clowns from your creepy slasher flicks.”_

_Now that sounded like fun. Gamzee honked, nodding to show he understood. “You got it, my brother.”_

_Anything Karkat wanted, Karkat got. Gamzee made sure of it._

TC: hEy ThErE mOtHeRfUcKeR  
TC: rEaDy To Be ScHoOlFeD oN tHe MiRaClEs Of ThE dArk cArNiVal??  
TC: :o)  
TG: oh great just what i wanted  
TG: another one of you dbags to deal with  



End file.
